Hey Im new here but have had dogs all my life. I have 2 dachshunds male and female. Small dog syndrome is the big prob here! My male is fun loving to all who come in our yard and home the female well she'll eat you up and even chase you down! I have tried to stop her aggression to no solutions seem possible. If we are at a beach shes fine,, if camping pretty good too but our front yard she just can not behave HELP!:eek:
If your female doxie barks at and gets aggressive towards people who come to your yard/home, I think it is territorial aggression and mostly because of her breed. Doxies are alert watch dogs so she is doing her own task. Correcting this will be difficult but not impossible, I think, to a certain extent.
Everytime she barks or gets aggressive, divert her attention to you by calling her to you or inside. I have 3 dogs, mostly border collies, that are also very alert and protective. When someone comes to the driveway they barks and get all perked up. In the yard, which faces a bike path, they bark at anybody going by across the 5 ft fence. What we have been doing is to call them inside with a cheerful manner when they start barking. When they come inside, I treat them. When I am in the yard too when they bark, I just call them to me and praise them when they come. With practice and patience, they come back 90% of time, which I am happy with. We are trying to revert their instinct, 90% is a good result to me.
If your female doxie can be aggressive to people who meet on the street, etc., it can be a fear aggression and she needs to be more socialized/desensitized gradually, by getting her used to a person at a time.
Either way, consistency and patience, along with positive reinforcement training, will work for the doxie. Good luck
This does sound like territorial aggression to me as well.
The best way to deal with territorial behaviour is to avoid situations which cause her to become aggressive (with distraction and removal training), as well as countercondition her to whatever stimuli sets her off.
Dont let her in the front yard unattended, this gives her the impression that she is "in charge" of the area, and should protect it. Try to let her out only while you're there, so that if she goes off, you can quickly get her attention with a command, or put her inside. You need to be really on top of correcting her immediately, either by getting her to come to you and stop paying attention to the guest, or by getting her to come to you and then go inside.
My dog used to bark at the gate when people walked in front of it, my method was to yell "no" immediately from wherever I was, then get outside to bring him to the backyard and tie him up to his kennel for about 10 minutes. I did this immediately and every time I heard him bark at the gate, and soon he understood what he was doing wrong. You can use whatever command or technique you think works best (put her inside, put her in the backyard, ask her to be quiet and sit, etc).
Dont be scared to have people over, the more people who come by while you're training her the better, because she'll get used to what you do and dont want out of her behaviour more quickly. Since she's fine outside your property, you should really work on her etiquette at home as much as possible.
I hope this helps, let us know how she goes. Its a common problem, but is a relatively simple thing to work through, despite maybe taking some time
